DeadManFloating has 8 chronicles

1. Just how Infinite is Undiscovery
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Dec 12 2009

   So being a fan of RPG's, this sounds like an ideal game for me. Turns out to be a hit and miss kind of game, where half of the different aspects are good, and the other... not so good or downright awful.
   
   The story is a typical save the world from a fanatical guy, who isn't what I would call out right evil, but more misinformed or misguided. Waking up in jail, you're saved by a member of a rebellion due to a case of mistaken identity, and quickly get hauled along due to the main characters apathy. And while he does grow a pair later on, it's nice to see a character that isn't a badass right out of the gate, he just wants to relax, have fun and play his flute.
   
   Later on he starts hauling his weight as the force continues breaking these large chains holding the moon down and in place. Why, you ask? Because every person in the world is given a magic symbol called a lunaglyph based on the phase of the moon on which they are born. The full moon being the strongest and a new moon receiving no glyph and seen as cursed. Chaining the moon, as per the villain, will make everyone equal, but at the cost of monster attacks and other various bad omens such as tidal waves if near the sea or tornados around the desert.
   The story goes along pretty fine, but a big hiccup with a tragic event shows how awful they acting really can be, and makes you wonder how those characters could've ever thought that was a good way of doing something. So mostly ok, but a bad part or two.
   
   Battle is really clumsy. You get a targeting ring around your current target, no lock on, with which you can tell the other party members to attack with a certain skill or attack yourself. The ring doesn't disappear until the monsters is out of hp and lays on the ground for a couple of seconds, thus leaving you attacking a dead body instead of switching to a new target. You can't move very well, unable to direct your attacks except straight, and if you use a skill, any mob that gets target before it actually activates, causes you to use the skill in the direction and not the one you were initially intending.
   
   Attacking when the ring is red (in range) causes you to lunge forward, but being on the edge of it being blue (out of range) can cause you to swing in mid air, and it actually saves the button pushes and doesn't activate as you use it. Meaning if you tap the attack key three times in a row quickly, it'll swing all three times, rather than having to time your presses near the end of each swing. Thus leaving you stuck in place swinging in midair at nothing often.
   
   Another sore point is the fact that the action doesn't pause when you open the menu. Thus when trying to quickly use a potion yourself or revive a dead member, you have to go through the menu into the items and scroll down to it while the action rages on. Having a healer is nice, but the other characters will seem to rely on them for everything, and if you give the command to heal while he's casting, you're characters won't even use a potion. One time I had a non-healer trying to use a potion (wasn't allowing them to use them, you can control what items they can use) even though I had a healer in the party. Still hadn't figured that one out.
   
   And last, every single point of damage will cause you to twitch, breaking any attack, except a few. And since you use any magic for your skills as soon as you cast/attack with it, with some of the big activation times, it will cause you to lose mana, and stand in place taking more attack since you can't move while being attacked. 1 point of damage out of 50k+ hp, causing you to stutter? Really?
   
   Lots of items to collect, especially if you're trying for the All Items achievement. Thankfully a couple free, downloadable vouchers from Live will cause all merchants to sell every type of ore, metal, skin and cloth. For some reason they didn't make one for the various woods. And it's easy to miss some items as you have to do every side quest in the game because it may have a key item that counts towards to the achievement. Use a guide to save yourself grief. No indication of where quests are, sometimes you have to "connect" (haul a character around with you in town, the way to craft) in order to get the quest. That can meaning talking to every person in town with every single character. Way too time consuming.
   Voices are pretty good actually. Dialogue can be a little, meh, at times, but not horrible. One exception is a maid in the service of some royalty in a town you visit. The one character I want to shut up somehow.
   
   Crafting is ok. Gathering can be time consuming as you may have to surprise a mob to get a chance at an item. An item or two become unavailable at all at certain points of the game so you need to stock up on everything unless you know what they are. When you get into Tri-Ace's usual bonus dungeon after beating the game, more recipes open up. Rare materials with HIGH failure rates which means you have to camp a save point. You level up and some stuff will become easy and you won't have to worry about breaking, but some items require enormous amounts of work. I know one type of weapon, where each upgrade requires 2 of the previous upgrade to craft. If you know about the power of 2, you know how quickly this can go up. I think in order to craft one item, you need to craft the very first, weakest weapon 64 times. Not even a strong weapon either, maybe halfway up the chain.
   
   Overall a decent game. Some subtle and not-so-subtle flaws, but fun to play and worthy of at least one playthrough.

   
   

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DeadManFloating has 2 comment s on this chronicle.

1. DeadManFloating
   Posted On Dec 12 2009

   Oh, I'm still playing this as mentioned in the GoGcast. Working on last 2 achievements while working on DW:G2. After that, either Halo 3 or I gotta get a new game.

2. BEN
   Posted On Dec 11 2009

   Awesome video game review man! 10/10
   
   I'm going to be honest, I can not see myself ever playing this game, but I saw it at E3 2008 and from this review, can tell there's a lot going on. Plus it's from Square Enix, so I wouldn't expect anything less
   
   What game is next on your to-do list?